


the welcome of a waveless bay

by Ias



Series: the things to which fate binds you [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 03:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: No matter the contents of her trousers, Silver is nothing more than a problem Flint can scarcely afford.





	the welcome of a waveless bay

From the wind-lashed bluff above, the beach at night appears to be a world entirely apart. Figures dance around the bonfire and then launch themselves across the flames, their shrieks and whoops of laughter twining with the smoke to rise up into the night. For the first time in a long time the crew are happy, plied with rum and women and the heady knowledge of the riches waiting at the end of their next hunt. Moonlight shimmers on the water. The air is cool and damp. It should be an alluring sight.

Flint pulls the cloth back over her face and digs her heels into her horse’s sides. In a moment, the sounds of merriment are swallowed up by the rhythmic beat of hooves on the hard-packed road.  

She rides slower than she would like. Any faster than the gentle canter her mare has settled into and she runs the risk of sliding from the saddle. She’s been ignoring the wound on her chest since the moment Singleton carved it into her—beneath a new shirt and the thickening clot of blood, the cut throbs with every jolt of her horse’s gait like a second, off-kilter heartbeat. Flint can’t remember the last time she truly slept. Her head feels as if the warm sea has funneled into her skull, strange currents spinning her thoughts in slow circles, tugging her away from shore.

She runs through the list again. The crew has been placated. Billy’s insubordination temporarily deflected. The thief cornered, and the missing page recovered. The gold yet within her grasp. She cycles through it again, and again, searching for something she’s missed. Already it has come so close to slipping through her fingers, like sand dissolving all the faster as she clenches her fist tighter around it.  

No. That isn’t right either. It had almost been _taken_ from her, torn from her grasp by the shortsightedness of her crew, by Singleton’s blind ambition, Richard Guthrie’s stubbornness. By an idiot and a coward who, seconds after Flint laid eyes on her the first time, leapt from the deck of the Walrus to land belly-first in the sea. Flint can still picture the look on Silver’s face as she climbed onto the railing, her eyes casting around desperately for any alternative to the choppy water below. Her gaze had locked with Flint’s in a flash of bright blue. Whatever Silver saw there was enough to send her hurtling over the edge of the ship to an ungainly end below. Flint did tend to have that effect on people.

Against her will, Flint’s mind drifts back to the Wrecks. To the moment, after chasing shadows through the labyrinth of damp stone for what felt like half the night, when Flint had finally glimpsed the dark form scrambling clumsily over the rocks. Flint had surged forward with the full weight of her body and slid the knife under Silver’s chin, pinning her fast. In the dim moonlight, another flash of wide blue eyes—and the distant yet quite apparent awareness that Silver’s body possessed a very different topography than what Flint had expected.

The revelation is of no consequence. Unexpected yet ultimately irrelevant, just like Silver herself. No matter the contents of her trousers, Silver is nothing more than a problem Flint can scarcely afford.

Yet Flint had glimpsed something in that moment, their faces inches apart and Silver one wrong word away from bleeding out on the stones. On seeing the realization on Flint’s face, Silver had tilted her head a fractional degree, as if to acknowledge a game well played, but lost. Even with a knife pressed to her throat, Silver had almost fucking _smiled_.

With a jolt, Flint’s legs tighten around her horse seconds before she would have slipped from the saddle. For a moment she’s almost drifted, not lulled to sleep by her thoughts so much as driven by them. She shifts her grip on the reigns so that she can dig her nails into the flesh of her palm. The road is familiar now. She is almost, almost there.

When the small hut with its eaves bathed in light finally comes into view, Flint allows her horse to slow. This far inland the air is textured by the chirping of insects rather than the rush of waves, but Flint can still smell the sea. She thinks sometimes that she carries it with her, in her clothes, her hair, on every inch of her skin. Even on nights like this one, when she’d like nothing more than to leave it behind.

Flint’s boots thud hollowly on the wooden porch as she steps up to the door. The warm light from the windows paints the night with an even deeper darkness. From behind the door, faint strains of music wind with the cicadas and the rush of the wind. A sad song. Familiar. For a moment Flint hesitates; as if those haunting notes in the air hold her trapped on the wrong side of the threshold, like the _soucouyant_ of local legend bowed over a plate of salt. She almost wishes she could turn away. But there is nowhere else to go. Gripping the handle of the door, Flint pushes it open and staggers inside.

He’s sitting at the harpsichord, his back to the door. When he turns to cast a look over his shoulder he does not smile to see Flint darkening his doorway. His eyes take her in, cataloging, and Flint knows exactly what he’s seeing—the cuts on her face, the blood seeping through her shirt, the faint tremor in every muscle. What she sees is a memory, superimposed over the dim reality of the cottage. Time slips out from underneath her, a wave that carries her away. She’s standing in a different doorway, looking in on a different room; and the man she sees is younger, his face unlined by sorrow, his clothes bright and beautiful and utterly impractical.

So much is missing, but for an instant, Flint has _this._ Then the absences snap back into place.

Matthew nods to himself, as if coming to a decision. The smile that touches his lips does not quite reach his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is kind.

“Take off your boots. I’ll boil some water.”

He rises from the bench of the harpsichord and steps into the kitchen. Flint stays standing for a couple more heartbeats before her legs can hold her up no longer. She crumples, groping for the doorframe as she falls backwards against the wooden door and sliding to the floor with a thud, each breath rough and ragged in her chest.

It feels like the first time she’s breathed since Gates told her she’d lost the vote. She cannot keep her eyes from closing, and doesn’t really try. Half of her is bathed in the warmth of the hearth, the smell of flour and smoke and the soap Matthew uses. On her other side, the open door. The sound of the sea-wind and the tangled darkness. Even when she rises, closes the door, sheds her bloody clothes and submits her wounds to Matthew’s attentions, part of her always will be here: balanced on the threshold, unable to enter and unable to leave.

Right now, in this brief moment, the world is done with her. Battered her and cast her aside. She has weathered it. She is safe.

Seconds pass. Perhaps hours. But in time, Flint’s bruised and bloodied hand grips the door frame. She pulls herself to her feet and seals the darkness behind the closed door like water against the hull of a ship. And then she limps, numb and empty, into the room where Matthew leads her.

**Author's Note:**

> “That all is as thinking makes it so – and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.” --Marcus Aurelius 
> 
> I thought for quite a bit about whether I wanted to genderswap Miranda too, and the very different ways the story would play out depending on that one decision--in the end I wanted to try and play it as close to canon as possible, which meant if Flint was a woman than Miranda would correspondingly be a man. 
> 
> In later fics I'm gonna dig a lot deeper into Flint's backstory, including her history with Matthew and... Theodosia? Tabitha??? turns out there are no good period-appropriate names that directly correspond to Miranda/Thomas :')
> 
> Even though the first two fics have been rewrites/retellings of scenes from canon (and there will almost certainly be a couple more), there are other aspects of this story that will venture more into AU territory as the timeline moves forward.


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